As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to not only process and store information locally and remotely but also to provide efficient and cost-effective maintenance and upgrades for systems that process and store information both locally and remotely (in a cloud). One option available to these users is an information handling system. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Information handling systems may reside local to a particular area or may reside in a remote or virtual space and communicate to other information handling systems and devices through a network path. An information handling system may also operate as a virtual machine, as a host machine, or a combination of a virtual machine and a host machine. An information handling system may also operate as multiple virtual and host machines in any combination known to one of ordinary skill in the art. To take advantage of the value of the information, information handling systems also must allow for efficient and cost-effective maintenance operations and upgrades. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may vary with respect to the type of information handled; the methods for handling the information; the methods for processing, storing or communicating the information; the amount of information processed, stored, or communicated; the speed and efficiency with which the information is processed, stored, or communicated; and the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of providing maintenance operations and upgrades. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include or comprise a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems. Such information handling systems may be servers, laptop computers, desktop computers, or any other type of electronic device capable of storing and retrieving data.
An information handling system will typically include some type of temporary information storage medium, such as random access memory (RAM). The amount of memory included in an information handling system may be on the order of gigabytes or may be greater or smaller depending on the operational requirements of the information handling system. As memory size increases, the likelihood that part of the memory will either be manufactured defective or become defective over time increases. If left unmanaged, the presence of defective memory cells, regardless of their size, can cause the information handling system to fail. Such failure can initiate an abrupt end to the current operation of the information handling system, resulting in the loss of critical data. A memory failure could also prevent the information handling system from starting up or booting up altogether.
As information handling systems continue to evolve and computer technology advances, the operational relationship between the CPU and memory becomes more significant and complex. Many attributes of modern systems (specifically, the introduction of multi-core processors and virtualization) are contributing to an ever-larger memory footprint within a typical information handling system. Consequently, not only is system memory becoming a much more substantial percentage of the overall cost of the information handling solution, the impact of erroneous behavior in the memory can have a much more adverse effect on the life cycle expense associated with the information handling system.
An information handling system may include one or more operating systems. An operating system serves many functions, such as controlling access to hardware resources and controlling the execution of application software. Operating systems also provide resources and services to support application software. These resources and services may include a file system, a centralized configuration database (such as the registry found in Microsoft Windows operating systems), a directory service, a graphical user interface, a networking stack, device drivers, and device management software. In some instances, services may be provided by other application software running on the information handling system, such as a database server.
Some information handling systems are designed to interact with other information handling systems over a network connection. In some instances, the information handling systems may act as servers, while others act as clients. In such systems, client applications and client devices may be designed so that the majority of the heavily used resources are at a shared information handling system, such as a centralized server or servers. The client devices may have minimal memory, disk storage, and processor power. Use of such client devices may reduce the total cost of ownership because of the reduced use of resources at the client devices and because the clients can be centrally administered and updated from the server. Such client devices may be particularly well-suited for a network which can handle a significant number of client devices.
Some information handling systems may be operable to be placed in different modes. For example, some information handling systems may be placed in a maintenance mode that permits a maintenance operation or an upgrade, for example, a firmware update, to be performed on the information handling system without unexpectedly corrupting, overwriting or losing data. Information handling systems may be configured as servers that include multiple management consoles for managing different silos. Prior solutions for performing maintenance operations require storing the maintenance mode in the management station or storing information locally. Such prior solutions permit only the users of a particular management station to know the state change or the maintenance activity of the local management station. Other management consoles have no way to obtain information or knowledge about the maintenance operation being performed on a given information handling system without manually synchronizing the information to all necessary systems. Using this approach to performing a maintenance operation, leaves synchronization to individuals, which can lead to human error. Also, because individuals perform synchronization on individual systems, the maintenance operations must be triggered manually at each console resulting in possibly longer than expected periods of downtime or inoperability.